Q 01/05

What steel-tipped loom part injured a mill worker, prompting 12-year-old Margaret E. Knight to invent a safety device?

A) A shuttle

B) A spindle

C) A bobbin

D) A treadle

Answer · why

A) A shuttle

A shuttle could fly out of a loom at high speed, and her device to stop it spread through the mills, though she never patented it or earned any money ...

Q 02/05

In 1871, which European monarch decorated Margaret E. Knight for her paper bag machine?

A) Napoleon III

B) Queen Victoria

C) Kaiser Wilhelm I

D) Tsar Alexander II

Answer · why

B) Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria honoured her in 1871, as bags made on the new machine came into use around the world.

Q 03/05

A local obituary honoured Margaret E. Knight as a woman version of which famous American inventor?

A) Alexander Graham Bell

B) Eli Whitney

C) Thomas Edison

D) Samuel Morse

Answer · why

C) Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was the yardstick, yet the comparison ended at the bank: she held some 27 patents but profited little and left an estate of under $300.

Q 04/05

What did Margaret E. Knight present, with journals and models, to prove the bag machine was her own design?

A) Newspaper clippings

B) Photographs

C) Sales ledgers

D) Blueprints

Answer · why

D) Blueprints

Blueprints drawn in her own meticulous hand, backed by witnesses from the machine shops, won her the dispute after a 16-day hearing.

Q 05/05

Margaret E. Knight's paper bag machine cut the paper and folded it, then did what to finish each bag?

A) Stitched it

B) Glued it

C) Stapled it

D) Tied it

Answer · why

B) Glued it

Glued it, all in one pass: a single machine did the work of 30 people making flat-bottomed bags by hand.